The Other Four

by Nsununguli Mbo

  “But there is a bit of a problem. I’m scared for my life. I think…” He held himself back. He was about to say what the cop had told him to say. That somebody had seen the young man.

  But that might present problems because the young man wasn’t supposed to be seen by anyone other than the two captors and Damon. Otherwise things wouldn’t work. And if things didn’t work, that would provide Damon with another assignment.

  The Boss would ask him to capture somebody else, something he wouldn’t be capable of doing because he would in prison.

  But when The Boss tells you to do something, you’ve to do it to avoid a bad spell. He wasn’t prepared for that. Not that he was prepared for what he was being forced to do either, but…

  “Damon, you’re sounding strange. Tell me what’s happening.”

  “I got the man. But after I had him inside the house, a neighbour passed by. The young man made a sound, and the neighbour asked me where the noise was coming from, looking suspicious, you know. I explained that I had captured a live rabbit. But I doubt if he believed me. Just then the young man made another sound, a clearly human one. I had to make the neighbour go. I claimed I had to go somewhere, but I have a feeling he may not have believed me, that…that…that he may alert the authorities…that…that I could get in trouble soon enough if this young man is to spend the night here.”

  “Why the hell don’t you subdue him then?”

  “Subdue him?’

  “Yes. Whack him on the back of the head. He will collapse.”

  “Boss, you know I can’t do that.”

  “So what do you want me to do?”

  “I think you need to collect him sooner than later, as in, now. Please. I’m really scared.”

  “I just can’t come up right now. There is a pressing matter I have to attend to urgently,” The Boss said and hung up. Damon wondered what the pressing matter was. He wondered why The Boss couldn’t come down right now.

  It was because he was horny. Extremely so. For some reason whenever he was angry he got horny, especially when he had a bit of Viagra in his system.

  He was angry with old man Damon for not using his brain. Why the hell would he call him about something that he could handle himself?

  On the other hand, to be fair on the old man, he had done the best he could.

  “Honey,” he said to his mistress.

  She looked up at him. That look. That’s what had captivated him in the first place. He leered at her. She got the message.

  “What did he say?” asked the cop as soon as Damon came off the phone.

  “He said he is busy.”

  “Call him again. We have no time to waste. He

  committed a serious offence and we need him here now. Or do you prefer to do his time in prison? That is, yours plus his?”

  Damon shook his head. No. he couldn’t speak because his throat was dry.

  “So, call him again.”

  Damon hesitated. His fear of The Boss was mounting, especially that he had already hung up on him once. When he did that, calling him back could cause problems. Serious problems. He learnt the hard way. His car battery went dead after he forgot to switch off the lights. Unable to think of anyone else who could come to his aid, he had rung The Boss. He had just finished giving a lengthy explanation as to why he was calling when him. Thinking he had got cut by mistake, he had rung back and when The Boss answered he yelled at Damon, telling him to never call The Boss unless he had missed his call or something.

  “He won’t answer,” said Damon in a trembling voice.

  “How do you know?”

  “I’ve worked for him long enough to know him.”

  “You know him well enough not to know where he lives?”

  You don’t ask people like The Boss where they live. Best if you didn’t know. Those who didn’t work with him knew where he lived.

  Just not Damon, and he had never wanted to know. All he knew was that the man had power and money and cars and women. Every time he had come down to see Damon he always brought a different woman.

  “I’m not supposed to know where he lives.”

  “Why?”

  “That’s just the way it is.”

  “Then you shall have to call him, otherwise you’ll be the martyr who serves time on behalf of a killer. You’re a killer too, we know that. Once our investigations go into full mode, we may turn some stones. And if we find that you have been involved in any killing yourself, you’re looking at the noose. And if you haven’t killed anyone, we will assume your boss has and you’ll get the noose in his stead.”

  Damon’s mouth was getting dryer by the minute. The fire was dying. Most of the water in the pot had evaporated, leaving behind some whitish stuff. His appetite had disappeared. He had been feeling like a rabbit today. His appetite had returned after a few days of not eating. And now it was gone again.

  He unfolded his little phone, which was a memento from when he was doing well. He contemplated calling The Boss. But then his phone rang.

  The Boss.

  “Hello,” Damon answered.

  “I’ll be there in an hour,” The Boss said and hung up.

  These were times when Damon felt suicide was the only way out. But he was afraid of jail. He couldn’t stomach the thought of being in one, what with him being so old. Why did he get himself into this? Tears were starting to sting his eyes.

  M

  y body was tensing up. I was increasingly becoming afraid that I was going to harm someone, The Boss

  especially, for making my life living hell. I wondered who he was, why he had wanted me kidnapped, why me specifically. I was sure he had my wife and children. I was feeling butterflies in my stomach. I was shaking and sweating. Fight or flight. But flight was out of the question this time because everything was going according to plan. I was a little hopeful that finally I was going to lay my eyes upon my wife and children. That is, if they had not been killed already.

  Seconds seemed like minutes, minutes like hours, an hour like a day. There was palpable tension in the room. The stage was set. As soon as The Boss’ car parked outside, I was to hide in one of Damon’s rooms, together with two of the cops. Damon would wait in the sitting room alone. The Boss would walk in and Damon would tell him where I was. The room would be dark. Damon would lead The Boss to the room. And the minute he entered, the cops will shine a spotlight on him and arrest him. I hoped The Boss wouldn’t suspect a thing because he sounded like a nasty paranoid piece of shit.

  The Police cars had been hidden in the bush, where the other criminals were left tied to each other, as well as to the car itself. I had been worried that they may escape, but the cops reassured me. They had done this before and knew what they were doing.

  Forty-five minutes had passed. The darkness intensified. My fear of the dark returned, but at least today I felt safe. The law was on my side. Once in a while I would become a little doubtful.

  Top people are involved, including the Police. But after learning that Modiri had been betraying me all along I couldn’t believe anything he had said. Still that didn’t stop me from becoming a little fearful as we waited. If the cops were involved, then The Boss was actually coming to collect me. But it was worth the risk because if the law was indeed on my side, then my nightmare was about to be over.

  I heard the sound of a car with a loud engine. Its lights pierced the darkness like a sharp knife. My heart started pounding faster. Damon started shaking, and his eyes became teary once again.

  You are too old to be doing these sorts of things, old man. You should have thought of the repercussions before getting yourself involved in something so dangerous.

  The car was very close now. The two cops stood up. They looked at me and said to Damon, “Which room?”

  “Straight down the corridor. Second room on the right.”

  Adam said, “Don’t get any ideas because we have the other two cops blocking any form of exit for all of you criminals.”

  We headed d
eeper into the darkness. The room stank of something I couldn’t identify a mixture of raw hide and many other things. Traditional doctor shit. I moved around cautiously and looked for a wall to lean against. I found one and groped along the wall with my right hand to make sure I didn’t lean against a dead body. The wall was rough. I leaned against it. The cops stood by the door.

  Footsteps approached the house, and I heard low voices, one of them, surprisingly, female. She laughed, and a deep male voice guffawed.

  “Knock, knock,” the male voice said. The Boss, I guessed.

  “Yes, come in,” said Damon. His voice was shaking, I could hear.

  “It’s so dark in here,” commented the male voice.

  “My lantern is running out of paraffin.”

  They were now in the sitting room.

  Suddenly the male’s voice changed. I wondered why. Maybe somebody I knew, fearful that I’d recognize his voice? He said, “I don’t have much time. Are the victim’s eyes covered?”

  “Yes. Come this way.”

  My heart went this way and that. I felt like I was going to faint, yet at the same time my body tensed. I made my hands into fists. The sweating intensified. I was about to face the man who nearly turned my life upside down. Or actually did, if my wife and children were dead.

  The door to the room we were in was opened cautiously.

  Adam switched on the spotlight.

  I looked.

  And nearly had a heart attack.

  I was looking at my father and my wife.

  The man who called himself The Boss was visibly shocked. His mistress fainted and fell. The cops cuffed him. She came to instantly and the cops cuffed her. She fainted again. One of the cops found some water, poured it on her and she came to. The Boss was looking around in a confused fashion. He looked menacingly at Damon as he, too, was cuffed.

  Damon was scared shitless. He was crying. His terror didn’t concern prison, no, but what The Boss was going to do to him as payback for the betrayal.

  “Do we have everybody?” one of the cops said, looking at Damon. How would Damon know? He was just being used here. He hadn’t known any of The Boss’ mistresses were involved, for instance. The Boss hadn’t told him. He looked pleadingly at The Boss. The latter had a menacing smirk on his face.

  You’ll pay for this Damon, the smirk said. I was still in shock. My mouth was dry. My father showed no remorse. He had this smirk on his face that I so much wanted to chop off his face with an axe. I couldn’t view him as my father right this minute.

  The gangster named Thabang sat with his right leg outstretched before him, left leg bent underneath the right one and his cuffed hands held below his chin like he was a praying mantis. You would have thought he was praying. But he wasn’t because he was snoring away, his horror movie gums exposed to the maximum.

  I was now feeling sorry for old man Damon. He had pissed himself and was shaking like a leaf. He was just a pawn in all this. Poverty had driven him to do what he had been trying to do. And the villain who was my father was the driving force who used an old helpless man and got him in trouble as a result. But at the same time I was thinking that Damon was an adult and should have employed his common sense. Common sense dictated that kidnapping people for whatever purpose was wrong, which meant he was a wicked man by nature.

  My father was not the only driving force behind the evil Damon got himself involved in, but his wickedness as well, hence I shouldn’t be sorry for him.

  “Are these all the people that are involved?” asked the cop named Adam.

  The old man started shaking even more violently. He looked up at his boss — my fuckin father, who was still smirking, looking comfortable and even triumphant.

  “Yes,” my father answered confidently on behalf of Damon.

  My wife wouldn’t look at me. She was leaning against my father’s fuckin shoulder, tears gleaming in her eyes. I had too many questions that were tumbling over each other, fighting for precedence. But there was one that stood out. I had to ask it. I stilled my voice, trying to control it because the anger that was boiling inside me rendered it tremulous, and said, “Where are my children?” I looked defiantly at my father as I asked the question, the adrenaline building to such high levels I feared I was going to punch him.

  He looked at me, smiled and said, “What children?”

  The adrenaline took over from my brain and I rushed over to my father and punched him in the face twice in quick succession. The cops restrained and warned me that I could be charged for assault. They told me to let the hands of the law take care of things. Fuming, I stood back and repeated my question. My father rubbed his face where I had hit him. My wife sniffled and a torrent of tears arrived. I could see the guilt on her face.

  My father looked up at me, smiled again and said, “Ngano, it’s time you grew up. You’ve no children.”

  “What the fuck do you mean? I’m talking about Mmoloki and Josephine.”

  He sighed heavily. My wife looked up at him and snuggled closer to him.

  He said, “They are not your children.”

  I tensed up even more. My wife hunched over and sobbed louder.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “They are my children.”

  “Your children?”

  He kissed my wife on the forehead and said, “Yes.”

  I hurled myself at him, punched him, slapped my wife and spat on her before the cops could stop me.

  “That’s it. We are taking you all to the Police station,” one of the cops said, holding my arms behind me while taking out handcuffs.

  “Don’t arrest him. He needs to know the full story. I might as well tell him now, now that I’ll be going to prison,” said my father. Adam let go of me, but stood very close just in case the fuse blew again.

  “This woman,” he said and kissed my crying wife again on the forehead, “was never your wife. She is and has always been my mistress. The wedding was staged. This was ordered by the gods. You’re a god’s child, brought into this world for sacrificial purposes. The date for the sacrifice was set from the beginning. The gods had wanted you to be stable and wanted you to have a wife and children.

  “So I gave you Margaret. You think you got married to her, but you actually didn’t. You two never got married. The woman who was in the wedding dress wasn’t her. It was her twin sister. The gods took her away as soon as the wedding was over. You are probably wondering how come I let you have sex with my mistress.

  “Of course, I couldn’t allow that. You never had sex with her. You never spent a single night with her either. We cast a permanent spell that blinded you into thinking that the woman you went to bed with and spent days with was your wife.”

  “Of course, she spent time with you now and again. But most of the time it was the ghost of my mistress’ twin sister. You were alone all long. I had children with her.

  “We let you spend time with them. We let you believe they were your children, then we took them back and gave them back to the gods, where they belonged.”

  “What the fuck did you do to Mmoloki and Josephine?”

  “You need not worry about that. It’s none of your business because they were never your children. Your days on earth are numbered anyway. Your time is over. You were meant to be sacrificed, failing which the gods will take you. You don’t exist. You never existed.”

  I decided there and then that my father was a very sick man.

  I

  feel like I’ve just come out of prison. I’ve been housebound for the last two months, unable to face the world. I’ve lost so much

  weight I wouldn’t be surprised if people failed to recognize me. I’ve no children, no wife. I work for Jomo Construction Company. We are building a shop for a local tycoon. I don’t plan to get married for a while, but I’ve a woman. Her name is Patricia. She is of mixed breed, with a locally born white father and a black woman. She is a gentle soul, doesn’t give me stress or anything at all. I’m sure I’ll marry he
r at some point, but after what happened I need to make sure she is not involved in some shady ritual shit before I do.

  I don’t really need to work. I do it just to keep myself busy. The judge ruled that under the circumstances I was entitled to all that my father owned, which he probably wasn’t going to need anyway because he was definitely headed for the noose.

  All along I had underestimated his wealth. There were cattle I hadn’t known about, cars I hadn’t known about. A lawyer popped into my life and quickly found what he calls a financial adviser — a miserly fellow who always wears the same clothes each time we meet. The lawyer rings me every evening to make sure I’m fine. Nice fellow. I’m in the process of moving the cattle to Tsabong as I intend to settle here, as far from my past as is possible, close to my Patricia.

  I gave the headman five cattle for finally listening to and believing me. It had taken a lot to convince him. When I called after I tricked the gangsters into a fake deal, as soon as I told him who I was, he called me all names and told me he didn’t want me in his village before hanging up. I had called him back immediately and he had answered and told me I was disrespecting him as the head of the village, and regardless of whether I got convicted if and when the Police found me, he didn’t want me back in his village before hanging up again. I had become jittery, and felt like pacing but by bound legs wouldn’t let me, and feared that my captors might see through my intentions and change their minds. Luckily enough when I threw a glance over at them, Thabang had been sleeping soundly against a tree which Dumani was showering with a strong gush of urine, seemingly having forgotten about me. It took me a lot of guts to call back the headman, and as soon as he answered, I said, as fast as I could, “Please, chief, help me. You’ve to believe me. My life and that of my family is in danger. I’m in captivity. The men that kidnapped me are planning to kill me, I suspect. I’ve tricked them into unknowingly handing themselves over to the Police. I need your help. Please call the Police. Please. I’ll be there in about ten minutes.”

  That got his attention. He got curious and I spilled out the details. He finally decided to give me the benefit of the doubt and agreed to call the Police and meet me at the conference centre. I’d silently prayed that my plan pan out well, because if anything went wrong, I would lose the chief’s confidence and I’d get into deeper trouble than I already was in. I even cried, not just for effect, but because the urge to cry was there. The chief was my only hope under the circumstances.